


This Fragile Body

by patrokla



Series: born a girl [2]
Category: Manic Street Preachers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7498812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Anyway, it’s not really about success,” Nicky says. “It’s about informing, and stirring things up. What does chart success mean if you’re turning out insipid bullshit that doesn’t matter to anyone except that it’s got a good beat to dance to? You’ve got to make music that matters, that can really mean something. Fuck evolution, it’s about revolution.”</p>
<p>or; Richey has gone to university, and Nicky Jones, ex-captain of the girl's football team, isn't too happy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Fragile Body

**Author's Note:**

> If you got here by searching for yourself or anyone you know, please click the back button.
> 
> Another one! I dunno what happened, I guess I'm just having fun with this series. Title from Born a Girl, obviously.
> 
> Warnings for: mild swearing, questionable opinions on music and TS Eliot, mentions of unwise alcohol consumption, and Americanisms.

Richey’s gone to university. 

Nicky expected it, knew it, and still somehow his absence at Oakdale is like the loss of a limb. She and James and Sean look at each other during lunch and they talk and joke and don’t mention the gap beside Nicky where Richey sat for over a decade. 

Perversely, sometimes she feels grateful that this change has overshadowed the other. She no longer carries a football jersey in her school bag. She walks home with James at the end of the day and they sit and listen to records for hours, Nicky keeping paper on hand to scribble down phrases she likes, or phrases she thinks of. When Sean gets home after orchestra practice, they talk, they squabble, they read - but they don’t mention the changes.

\---

Swansea is only an hour’s drive on the M4, but Richey’s the only one with a license. Nicky feels like a child when she calls him and asks him to come visit for the night or the weekend.

“Come home, Sean has an exhibition tonight, you can’t miss it,” she says, a week into his first term and he laughs and picks her up two hours later. 

“Come home, James and I have a new song and you’ve got to hear it,” she tells him the week after, and she spends the next hour frantically writing words for the melody James had come up with that day.

“Come home, my mum made a really good dinner,” she says three days later. He asks her not to speak so loudly, and when he shows up that night he’s wearing shades that he doesn’t take off.

Nicky’s dad says maybe she should be focusing on her A-levels, and on applications to universities.

“Universit _ y _ ,” she says. “I’m going to Swansea, no question.”

The third weekend, she and James and Sean pile onto the bus and show up at Richey’s dorm. It’s not a surprise, they’d been talking about it all week, but the Richey that opens the door to his tiny single room is withdrawn and wary at first, as though they were guests who hadn’t been invited to the party. 

He begins to thaw as they talk, and when James pulls out _The Queen is Dead_ and teases Richey about how the desk with his record player and books is the only tidy place in his room, things feel like normal again. 

There’s a brief stutter when Nicky spots three bottles of vodka under Richey’s bed, but they’re getting good at not talking about things, and Sean throws a shoe at Richey’s head and nearly hits a lamp, and everything - everything is okay.

\---

Milligan stops her in the hallway one day, hand reaching out to shove her against the wall before his eyes dart down to where a thick brace is visible around her right knee. 

“Jones,” he says, “Heard you’re done with footie.”

“Well,” Nicky says, itching with the desire to get away from him, “someone tackled me, and did a fair bit of injury, so I didn’t have too many options.”

“Right,” he says, and his mouth twitches, maybe in an aborted smile, maybe not, and Nicky wants to lean forward and headbutt him. Kick him. Hurt him.

“Too bad,” he says, “I always thought you looked best in your jersey.”

And he walks away before Nicky can do or say anything, leaving her pressed against the wall, hands clenched into fists. 

\---

“I think we need to show that the genre has matured and progressed since The Clash,” James says, and he’s barely finished the sentence before Sean opens his mouth.

“It’s not about direct musical progression, it’s about inspiration and evolution,” Sean says passionately, and Nicky’s never seen him this worked up about anything before.

“Yes, evolution as in progression, as in  _ getting better, _ ” James says, exasperated.

“Wrong! Evolution as in evolving to fit new musical circumstances, not necessarily better or worse, just a change needed for survival.”

“But survival in either case is success, it’s filling a gap that’s empty,” James says, and then he and Sean both snicker. 

“Sorry, Nicky,” James says after a moment.

“Fuck off,” she sighs, tired of the whole conversation, which they’ve had five times this week, and tired of everything else besides.

“Anyway, it’s not really about success,” she says, because that’s her part in this play. “It’s about informing, and stirring things up. What does chart success mean if you’re turning out insipid bullshit that doesn’t matter to anyone except that it’s got a good beat to dance to? You’ve got to make music that matters, that can really mean something. Fuck evolution, it’s about revolution.”

“Alright, Lenin,” James says, but she knows that he knows that she’s right, and that next time they sit down to work on a song, he’ll care less about radio-friendly key progressions.

She hopes, anyway.

\---

Richey is drunk most of the time she calls, these days. Though she calls less, partly because her parents complain about the bill, and partly because she can’t find a way to say ‘I miss you’ that isn’t the words themselves; she’s run out of excuses. And partly, really, because hearing his voice slurring the simplest of words, tongue stumbling as he tries to talk about what he’s learning in his classes - it’s too much, too difficult.

So, she calls less. And she and James and Sean don’t go visit him again, although occasionally one of them will bring it up casually, and the others will feign genuine excitement at the prospect of that cramped room and Richey’s pale face, dark crescents underlining his eyes. 

Nicky writes. She writes and she studies and she reads, stopping at the Edwards’ house to take books from Richey’s room. She colours her hair red, by herself for the first time. There is a moment, one single moment, when the dye runs down into the sink and she wants to call Richey and beg him to come home, to be okay. 

But the moment passes and, eventually, so does the urge.

\---

Sometimes Nicky barely misses football. Her old gear and uniform are stuffed in the back of her wardrobe, and over time she stops automatically heading for the field as soon as her last class is over. She doesn’t miss Milligan taunting her at every opportunity, though she does miss getting one over on him. 

She misses the team,  _ her _ team, and the camaraderie that they shared after a win or a good practice. She even misses the way her back would ache when she picked Rachel up after a win, spinning them until they fell down, dizzy and laughing. 

Rachel’s the new captain now, and she’s good at it, doesn’t take any shit, and she looks fierce and beautiful on the field, hair cut short over the summer, just long enough to get in her eyes. Sometimes Nicky watches practice, and smiles at the goals, at Rachel running a hand through her hair to brush it away. 

\---

Richey sends her a letter, a few weeks before the end of term. Technically, it’s addressed to her, and then James and Sean. Nicky wonders how the post decided who to deliver it to. 

It’s full of stuff about classes, about how terrible his dorm-mates are, how no one seems to take their studies seriously, a brief rant on the ‘fucking awful’ reading list for a literature class, how he’s liking his Politics courses, and how it’ll be good to come home for Christmas.

“You lot better not have forgotten me,” it says at the bottom, and then, “Joke. See you next Thursday."

Nicky shows it to James and Sean the next day at lunch. They’re all supposed to be studying, but James had thrown his books down on the lunch table when he’d arrived, furious and fuming, and Sean only mouthed ‘Milligan’ when Nicky raised her eyebrows at the display.

So she pulls out the letter, hoping that it, at least, will stop James from just sitting there flexing his jaw and looking ready to sequester himself in a supply closet for the rest of the day.

“Rich wrote us a letter,” she says, placing it in front of Sean. 

It takes less than a minute for James to shift his outrage onto the fact that Sean had been given the letter, not him, and after a brief tussle that leads to the second page being torn in several places, Sean looks considerably more annoyed, and James considerably less. 

“He doesn’t like TS Eliot? What have they done to him down there?”

“I know,” Nicky says, thrilled that they can sit there, the three of them, and all be angry about the same thing. “As if he didn’t memorize Ash Wednesday last summer and recite it incessantly at us!”

“Even though The Wasteland is much better,” Sean says, and for half a second they all wait for Richey to scoff.

“I miss him,” James sighs, eying the empty seat beside Nicky.

“Yeah,” Nicky says. “Yeah, so do I.”

\---

The three of them descend on the Edwards’ house early Thursday morning, end-of-term exams be damned.

“Is he here,” James says, the only one of them not out of breath from running down the streets.

It’s not a question, he’s already leaning over Mrs. Edwards’ shoulder, looking for bags in the front hall.

“Yes,” she says, laughing, “but he says he knows you have exams, and that he’s asleep, so come back in the afternoon.”

“We’ll be quick, really, we just want to see him before class,” Nicky says, trying to look pleading. 

“We’ll be two minutes, promise,” Sean says, and the combined force of their earnest expressions must sway Mrs. Edwards, because she steps back from the door and lets them through with a “Just two minutes!” as they run up the stairs. 

Richey is, in fact, asleep, as they discover when Sean opens his door, and they exchange glances, considering. 

“Fuck it,” James whispers, and he jumps onto the end of Richey’s bed.

“Wake up, Teddy Edwards! We’ve arrived!”

Richey jerks up, alarm flickering in his eyes, before he registers who the intruders are. He lays back down with a sigh, his muttered “Fuck off” at odds with his smile.

That’s the sign for Nicky and Sean to pile on the bed as well, and they spend a good thirty seconds trying to settle into some semblance of a comfortable position on the twin bed. 

“We missed you,” Nicky says to the bit of Richey’s arm she can see from where she’s laying.

“Even though you have shit opinions on Eliot,” Sean adds, and Richey laughs.

“I missed you as well,” he says, “Now go take your exams, yeah?”

“Okay,” James says, but none of them move for another minute.

“We  _ missed _ you,” Nicky says again, grabbing Richey’s arm.

“I know,” he says softly. “I’ll see you tonight, promise.”

There’s a mass convulsion, all of them trying to get closer to Richey at once, and then they reluctantly untangle themselves one by one, Nicky the last to get off of his bed, willing herself to  _ go, finish the exams, go, and then you can see him again _ .

“Tonight,” James says, before they shut his door and walk downstairs, with none of the eagerness of only a few minutes prior. 

“Let’s go take some tests!” Nicky says with blatantly false enthusiasm, making James and Sean sigh. 

“Let’s take some tests.”

\---

That night, crowded around the Bradfield dinner table, Richey on her right like he always should be, Nicky feels like everything could be okay. 

It’s only one more term and then she’s off to university, and - well, she’s not sure about Sean and James, but at least she and Richey should be in the same place. She wants them all in one place forever, just the four of them, talking and squabbling and falling asleep on one bed, none of them completely warm, but all of them content.

The bruises under their eyes are wiped away, those days.


End file.
